Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night. Литагент HarperCollins USD

impossible.”

      She frowned. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

      “Nina and I decided before I left that if either of us ever suspected our mail was being read, we’d write that we were enclosing three sunflowers. Some snooper must’ve thought they’d fallen out, so he covered himself by adding them. The mistake confirms what Nina surmised, and it fits with this.” He gestured at the damage around them. “I thought I was being followed yesterday and today. The vandalism proves he’s here. And it’s a message that he can have someone in Moscow scrub Nina to punish me if I try to escape now. He knows I know that.”

      Liz remembered an official statement during the Communist show trial of Boris Arsov, a Bulgarian defector: The hand of justice is longer than the legs of the traitor. A few months later, Arsov was found dead in his prison cell. The Kremlin had been relentless about liquidating anyone who escaped. Even today, some former operatives prowled the globe for those they felt had betrayed the old Soviet Union.

      “You expect him to kill you,” she said woodenly.

      “You must go, Liz. I accept my fate.”

      “Who is this man?”

      “A KGB assassin called Oleg Olenkov. He’s a master of impersonation and recruiting the unsuspecting. Even after the Soviet Union dissolved, he hunted me. So I decided to become Arkady Albam—I thought he’d never look for me in academia. But for him, eliminating me is personal.” He peered at her. “My name is actually Dmitri Garnitsky. I was a dissident. Those were desperate times. Do you really want to hear?”

      “Tell me.” Liz’s eyes traveled from window to door and back again. “Quickly.” As her gaze returned to Arkady, a small, strange smile vanished from his face. A smile she had never seen. For an uncomfortable instant, she was suspicious.

      Day after day in the bitter winter of 1983, Moscow’s gray sky bled snow through the few hours of light into the black well of night. From their flat, Dmitri and Nina Garnitsky could hear the caged wolves in the zoo howl. Across the city, vodka poured until bottles were empty. Meanwhile in Europe, Washington was deploying Pershing missiles aimed at the Soviet Union. A sense of helpless desolation shrouded Moscow, escalating the usual paranoia. The Kremlin became so convinced of a surprise nuclear attack that it not only secretly ordered the KGB to plan a campaign of letter bombs against Western leaders but also to immediately erase Moscow’s dissident movement.

      Dmitri was the city’s ringleader. Still, he managed to evade surveillance and disappear for a week to print anti-Soviet pamphlets on an old press hidden in a tunnel beneath the sprawling metropolis. Nina was with him in the early hours before sunrise of that last day, making fresh cups of strong black tea to keep them awake.

      Suddenly Sasha Penofsky hurtled in, snow flying off his muskrat shapka hat and short wool coat. “The KGB has surrounded our building!”

      “Tell us.” Dmitri pulled Nina close. She trembled in his arms.

      “That KGB animal, Oleg Olenkov, is under specific orders to get you, Dmitri. When he couldn’t find you, he decided to go ahead and arrest our people. They took everyone to Lubyanka.” He swallowed hard. “And there’s more. The KGB wants you so much that they brought in a specialist to wipe you. He’s an assassin with a reputation for never failing. They call him the Carnivore.”

      Nina stared at Dmitri, her face white. “You can’t wait. You have to leave now.”

      “She’s right, Dmitri!” Sasha turned on his heel and ran. He had his own escape plans. No one knew them, just as no one knew Dmitri’s. It was safer that way.

      “I’ll tell them where your cell met, darling.” Nina’s voice broke. “I’ll be fine.” They would interrogate and release her in hopes they could find him through her. But if they believed she was also a subversive, her life would be at risk, too.

      His heart breaking, they rushed down the tunnel. He shoved up a manhole cover, and she climbed out. His last sight of her was her worn galoshes hurrying away through the alley’s fresh snow.

      Dmitri paced the tunnel five minutes. Then he accelerated off through the bleak dawn, too, carrying a lunch pail like any good worker. The cold pierced to his marrow. Little Zhigulis and Moskvich cars roared past, a stream of bloodred taillights. He watched nervously. He knew Olenkov by sight but had never heard of the Carnivore.

      On the other side of Kalininsky Bridge, he was running down steps toward a pedestrian underpass when the skin on the back of his neck suddenly puckered. He glanced back. Walking behind were a young couple, an older man with a briefcase and two more men alone, each carrying lunch pails like his. One had a mustache; the other was clean-shaven. All were strangers.

      When an evergreen hedge appeared on his right, he yanked open a wooden gate and slipped into a small park beside an apartment building for the privileged nomenklatura. The skeletal branches of a giant linden tree spread overhead like anemic veins. He grabbed a snow-covered lawn chair, carried it to the trunk and jumped onto the chair. Reaching up to a hole in the trunk, he pawed through icy layers of leaves until he found his waterproof bundle. In it were rubles, rare U.S. greenbacks and a good fake passport.

      But as he pulled it out, Dmitri heard the quiet click of the gate. He stiffened. Turned awkwardly—and looked at a pistol with a sound suppressor aimed steadily at him. Pulse hammering, he raised his gaze, saw the mustache. The gunman was one of the workers behind him in the underpass.

      “You are Dmitri Garnitsky.” The man spoke Russian with a slight accent and stood with feet planted apart for balance, knees slightly bent. About six feet tall, he was muscular but not heavy, with a bland, expressionless face and nearly colorless eyes. There was something predatory about him that had nothing to do with his weapon.

      Dmitri tried to think. “Nyet. I don’t know—”

      Abruptly, the gate swung open again. The gunman tensed, and his head moved fractionally, watching as the notorious Olenkov marched in, impressive in his mink shapka hat and black cashmere overcoat. He was taller and broader—and smiling. He unbuttoned his coat and removed a pistol, which he, too, pointed at Dmitri.

      “Very good,” he told the first man. “You’ve found him.” Then to Dmitri: “Come along, Comrade Garnitsky.” He held up handcuffs. “We’ll make a good show of it. A lesson for others who would harm our Soviet.”

      Dmitri climbed off the chair and tucked the packet under his arm. “Why bother with handcuffs? You want me dead to scare the others into recanting publicly before you send them to the gulags. You’ll kill me here anyway.”

      “That’s almost true,” Olenkov said easily. “But I see no reason to make myself sweat carrying you. And my specialist was not hired to lug corpses. No, it makes much more sense to shoot you at the van where there’ll be witnesses that you resisted.”

      The other man’s head whipped around. Expressionless, he studied Olenkov.

      Dmitri’s rib cage clenched. Olenkov’s words thundered in his mind “—my specialist was not hired.” The other man must be the Carnivore.

      “What about my wife?” Dmitri demanded.

      “I’ll deal with her later.” Olenkov gestured with his weapon and ordered the other man, “Bring him!”

      The Carnivore did not move. “A man in my business must be careful.” His tones were quiet, commanding. “You’re the only one who was to know who I am, yet you had me followed.”

      “So?” Olenkov asked impatiently.

      “I never do wet work in public.” His eyelids blinked slowly as he considered the KGB officer. “Never on the street. Never where there are witnesses who can identify me. My security rules are absolute. You knew what they were.” It seemed almost as if he was giving Olenkov a chance to come to his senses. “I work alone.”

      But the muscles in Olenkov’s